There’s a moment after Liverpool have beaten Chelsea in the tumultuous 2007 Champions League semi-final that just sums up Rafa Benitez.

All around him there is bedlam as the Reds celebrate the most dramatic of penalty shoot-out victories. Pepe Reina is engulfed in a sea of red shirts and the noise around Anfield is deafening. And then the cameras pan to Benitez , calmly slotting his glasses into their container and slipping them into the top pocket of his shirt.

It’s a split second image but one that stuck in the mind of Darren Farley – Liverpool supporter, huge Rafa fan and simply the best football impressionist in the business.

Impressionist Darren Farley (Image: Liverpool Echo)

In case you haven’t seen him yet, Farley’s pitch perfect videos of stars like Jamie Carragher, Steven Gerrard, Harry Redknapp, Roy Hodgson and Steve Bruce have reached 112million people across the world. He’s a TV regular on Soccer AM, he’s done Match of the Day, Sky Sports and he’s one of the faces of bookmakers Coral – but it’s Benitez, his Reds hero, who is still his favourite man to mimic.

Of course the voice is key. Benitez’s English is excellent but his Spanish accent is instantly recognisable. But, Farley says, it is about more than just nailing the distinctive Benitez phrases.

“Rafa gives you so much. He’s got so many little mannerisms,” he says.

“The voice is absolutely instrumental, of course, but the characteristics play such a big part. If you can become someone before you speak, that’s a big part of it for me.

“I’m always massively appreciative of it when someone comes up to me and says ‘You’ve got the mannerisms nailed there.’ That means the world to me when someone says that to me.

Video Loading

Video Unavailable

Click to playTap to play

The video will start in 8Cancel

Play now

“I analyse Rafa’s mannerisms on TV and you always notice that when he comes to a difficult question he says it with his face: ‘I don’t like where you’re going with this question’. It’s how his brow furrows upwards!

“He always starts with a short ‘Yah’. It’s not a yeah, it’s a short ‘Yah’. It’s those little, tiny things which are so big with an impression.”

It was Benitez who kicked off the career that has seen the Reds fan meet all of his idols. “I didn’t really know I could do impressionism. I had a bit of an interest in people though: their little tics and characteristics,” he said.

“I didn’t ever get up and think ‘I’d love to do impressions of famous people’. I was a big fan of the guys who could do it – I remember getting Alastair Macgowan’s Football Backchat videos – but I was not an impressionist. But because I was a massive football fan I would constantly watch Liverpool and the three people who were the face of the club at the time were Jamie Carragher, Steven Gerrard and Rafa. They were the spokespeople and Rafa was the first manager that I did and it was solely because I used to watch him all the time.

poll loading

What will the result be on Saturday?

0+ VOTES SO FAR

“I was on holiday and I remember doing it messing about and Liverpool were in the Charity Shield final and my mate said ‘Oh my god, that’s really good’. The impressions were very generic Spanish at the time and it kind of went from there.”

And, of course, he noticed the glasses thing after the Chelsea win. “We’re working on an idea now where it would be a documentary following certain characters around and Rafa would have to be one of them,” Farley said.

“The stuff you could do with him would be unbelievable. The little glasses thing, it’s great. He’s so calm. Liverpool would win massive Champions League games and he’d be so calm. He’d put his glasses in his shirt and walk into the pitch.

Newcastle United manager Rafa Benitez (Image: Getty Images Europe)

“He’s so calm. He never celebrates a goal. It’s never about him – he just wants to win. He’s so businesslike. I love that.”

So does Benitez like the impressions? “I’ve met Rafa on a couple of occasions and he’s such a nice man, a warm fella,” he said.

“They say don’t meet your heroes and he’s up there but I wasn’t disappointed. He gave me a little thumbs up and a few tips on how to do him! One of his tips was that he says compact a lot, which is true.

“I remember when I met Fernando Torres he said that all he ever says is ‘compact’. He says it all the time. He said that no matter how well you’ve done, he’ll give you notes. You score ten goals and he’ll tell you afterwards how you could have scored 11. That’s what you want from a manager.”

United head to Anfield on Saturday evening and Liverpool fans will no doubt serenade their former manager, who retains a huge amount of affection on Merseyside.

There are plenty of similarities between the two cities and Farley reckons the characteristics that endeared him to Liverpool fans are the same ones that Newcastle fans love.

“He’s tough, he’s very stubborn. He’s just a proper manager,” he explains.

Read More

“Rafa just knows what he’s doing, doesn’t he? For me I have a lot of love for him. He was an obsessive and he was really, really good at Liverpool. I loved his team,

“We were still competing with the very best. Chelsea had just started spending in the Abramovich era and Rafa went out and got Xabi Alonso for £10.5million. No-one had a clue who he was and then all of a sudden he’s a world beater.

“Garcia, Pepe Reina – they weren’t players people knew an awful lot about but they turned out to be top players. It was a tough team: it was a physical team and as a fan it was my favourite team.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of Jurgen Klopp – I love what is happening now at Liverpool but that team was feared. It was feared and he did it on a shoestring. Compared to other European teams, the budget was nothing. I look at the Mascherano signing – no-one had a clue why he did that. Everyone was scratching their head and then after two or three games you thought ‘He’s world class’.

“He’s obviously a great person but he’s an intriguing character. I find him quite unique. He’s got a clear obsession with football.

“Because I’m such a massive Rafa fan I follow Newcastle now as well. I remember when he got that job I said to one of my friends ‘What a fit that is’. Him as a person and that city as well. Newcastle people just know their football.

“You go around the country and no disrespect to certain cities, but you can go to some places and the fans don’t really have a clue about football. But Newcastle, in that city they know about football. You can talk football and they know it inside out – they will be able to tell you the ins and outs of a lad playing in the under-23s.

“Benitez will empathise with that. He’s probably gone in not quite knowing what to expect and he’s fallen in love with the city. You can see that and it doesn’t surprise me. Liverpool fans loved him and they still do.

“Newcastle have had managers there who weren’t the right person since maybe Kevin Keegan but now there is no other club in the league that has a manager-fan relationship like they do with Rafa.”

Farley sees a Liverpool win on Saturday but believes Benitez will keep Newcastle up. And beyond that, he believes United would prosper under his hero.

“The Newcastle squad isn’t strong. Benitez has pulled off a bit of a miracle keeping Newcastle in the hunt I think and you guys must be so frustrated because it’s an unbelievable club but Rafa just needs a bit of investment there,” he said.

“It’s a great fanbase, an unbelievable manager – it’s got all the ingredients. I just think if you give Rafa the tools, honestly the club would take off.”